IPL: More than just a game

IPL helped draw attention away from this huge failure of governance

Berlin 1936, Moscow 1980, Beijing 2008: Three Olympics. Each hosted by a horrible regime. This is just a small random sample. Undemocratic regimes love hosting sporting events. In 1978, for example, Argentina hosted the football World Cup.
 
Argentina was then run by a bunch of genocidal generals. Their favoured way of handling dissidence was to chuck protesters out of planes into the Atlantic. They also used stadiums as jails. The Mexico Olympics of 1968 was preceded by the massacre of hundreds, and was punctuated by protests against Mexico’s one-party regime. 
 
Nations spend large sums lobbying to host Olympics